Tag Archives: Evil

2016 was an excellent year for the progress of Evil. It’s time for those of us who believe there ‘is such a thing as society’ to start pushing back harder, for a happier 2017.

I plan to take on fascism, corrupt media, lying politicians, hierarchy in general, fixing democratic reform, climate chaos and replacing the failing socialism and capitalism systems, as the year warms up; but for now lets warm up with open communication protocols. This article recommends the Franz messaging application:http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/12/21-must-have-apps-ubuntu. It says:

“The days of multi-protocol instant messengers are long gone, with (mostly) proprietary mobile-first services now ruling the roost.

Want to chat on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram or another well-known messaging service on Ubuntu, without using your browser? Try Franz.”

Or don’t. Ask why Google needed to assimilate XMPP into Google Talk, in order to destroy it, so it could launch Hangouts to compete with Skype and Apple and control yet another market. It got beaten and left us with the current fragmented mess. When will we all learn the lesson to choose open protocols not products and suppliers that do what is good for us rather than for themselves? We will only progress in software if we stop throwing everything away every few years and starting again with something worse. Customers and governments must start demanding this. We must NOT Brexit or Trump on international communication. Tribal thinking is Bad, kids!

Can anyone recommend a good XMPP service provider that serves the UK which REALLY believes in open standards and privacy, like Google, Facebook, Apple and (occasionally) Microsoft pretend to? Maybe with an old-fashioned SMTP/POP email service that isn’t Gmail. Liars must be punished, or they’ll keep doing it… and we’re back to politics.

This week I mentioned a product in a closed Slack group and received targeted marketing next time I logged into Facebook. What else is being snooped on?

Between Christmas and New Year I saw Wolf Hall & Bring Up The Bodies at the RSC’s Swan Theatre. They tell a tale of how low men will sink, initially in pursuit of power, then to hang on to it and finally, just to survive. I’m sure Samsung, Google, Apple and Microsoft are not Henry VIII but I noted that the only thing the powerful are afraid of is the opinion of ‘the people’. When they lie to us, even to themselves, someone needs to point it out to them. Perhaps their souls might still be saved.

Allow me to take a break from the tale I began in my most recent blog entry, to give a real world example of why open standards matter, while it’s fresh in my mind.

I have a ‘Smart TV’ made by Samsung (which they no longer support.) I have a Samsung Galaxy S phone (2 actually, because Samsung no longer support them either, so ‘normals’ buy a new phone.) I have boxen, in various states of decrepitude, running Linux and I have occasional access to Apple OS X, Windows 7 laptops and a Google Nexus 7. They all connect over a wireless router from O2 and a Wireless Access Point from Netgear. They are not part of the problem.

It should be easy to play content from any of the intelligent devices on any of the display devices. Blindly moving bit-streams over distance is what The Internet was designed for. There is a device discovery protocol called UPnP and a wireless streaming protocol called DLNA that were defined for this. I’m sure you will be amazed to know that it isn’t easy. While AllShare on my Galaxy S plays nicely with it’s cousin the Samsung TV, the software isn’t available for the newer Android on the Nexus 7, nor even on the latest Samsung phones. Neither have Samsung made their AllShare software available for Linux (now renamed ‘Samsung Link’ to reduce irony levels.) Odd, as I thought Google said Android was ‘open’ and Android is built on Linux.

Apple want me dependent on the company iTunes store. Microsoft would like me using MediaServer to ‘keep me’ committed to Windows. Samsung wanted me to use AllShare/Link and Google now want me locked in to Chromecast, so ‘all my database are belong to them’.

I’d like life to be easy. I think most of us would. Apple will sell me easy. Google and Microsoft will sell a close approximation, and cheaper. I suspect Samsung will change their definition of easy every 6 months because clearly everyone should upgrade all their electronic equipment annually. I’m not willing to play this game of ‘1984’ bred with excessive consumption. I suspect DLNA underlies all these ‘products’ and they can be made to work together but an electric fence is still oppressive, even if you only believe it to be turned on.

I want freedom and privacy and I’ve accepted that I’ll soon have to pay for that. If we are in a new services market then I want it to be fair, transparent and competitive. Private protocols should not be used to lock us in walled gardens, however shiny the handles on the shovels.